Is President Obama's new proposed stimulus plan just another big spending spree? Getty

September 7, 2010

ADVERTISEMENT

President Obama is calling for a new series of measures to jolt the economy, including a $50 billion infrastructure plan he unveiled Monday and a series of tax breaks for businesses he is proposing later in the week. The White House says the plans will be all or mostly paid for by ending subsidies for oil and gas companies and closing corporate loopholes. But with Republicans already painting the plan as another big spending spree, is a new "stimulus" package a good idea? (Watch a Fox News discussion about the plan)

These are great ideas... that will never pass: Obama's proposals not only "make sense on the merits," says Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress, but in normal times they would be pretty uncontroversial. In this political climate, "Congress almost certainly won't agree to anything this sensible," and "presidential 'messaging'" won't change that or the outcome of the midterms. But Obama should still keep the good ideas coming, and "hope for the best.""More like this please"

It would have been smart six months ago: Boy, has the administration bumbled its de facto "second stimulus," says Joshua Green at The Atlantic. "These measures come far too late. Had the White House put forward a unified package in the spring, as it considered doing, some version might have already passed." Instead, Obama has set himself up for failure by dawdling and then offering an a la carte plan — allowing Republicans to snap up the tax cuts and sabotage the rest. "A second stimulus"